Descent and DnD - Also, I love resource management!

The last two weekends were fun; I got to play D&D and Descent the weekend before last, and played Descent again this past weekend.

For DnD we finished up one delve and started another. I'm thoroughly enjoying my Gnoll Cleric "Snaggletooth". I didn't settle on a name before I started playing her, but everyone else settled on Snaggletooth pretty quickly. Maybe her real name will come out later, maybe not.

Our party of 4 (Wild Sorceror, Battle Cleric, Paladin, and Rogue) has been doing pretty well on delves a level or two above our own. Maybe the DM is going easy on us, but I think it also might have something to do with the fact that guaranteed 3-encounter dungeons make resource management easier. If we make it to the final encounter of the delve without using our daily, the only question left is "how soon?", not "should I?".

For Descent, I played the overlord both times, and it was fun. Definitely different from being a DM, but that was good. I liked being adversarial for a bit instead of cooperative. The first game seemed a little easy for the heroes, but I realized afterwards I had neglected to collect threat when monsters rolled surges on attacks on the heroes. That little difference might have puched me closer to winning, since I rarely had enough threat to play any traps until the very end of the game. Even though I was doing it wrong, though, it was a neat way to regulate my damage dealing potential.

The second game did not go so well for the heroes. In fact, they lost in the first room of the dungeon, blasted by sorcerors and torn to pieces by beastmen. It didn't feel very satisfying to "win" as the Overlord. I kind of wish I had pulled some punches so we could have continued through the rest of the dungeon...oh well. We did get to play some tiddlywinks...I mean X-bugs...I mean Micro Mutants: Evolution. Also, I got this awesome picture:

Wife is not happy. Pictures = evidence of her nerd gaming.

I really enjoy the tension caused in 4E DnD and Descent by the decisions you have to make regarding your actions and resources. You can only do so much in a turn, but there are 15 monsters coming after you! You can do cool stuff if you spend a daily/encounter/action point/fatigue but then what do you do if something even bigger comes around the corner? I love being provided with those tactical (and sometimes even strategic) decisions.